Multiple Proxy Requests

I'm new to Perlbal, and considering using it aggregate the results of
multiple parallel HTTP requests. The application would be part of a
distributed search engine. A request comes in, and instead of
proxying it to a single backend, I would make simultaneous requests to
one server from each of a dozen or so pools. Then I collate the
results, and send the processed results back to the original client.
Does this seem like a good fit for Perlbal? Would the plugin
architecture allow this sort of thing?
Looking back through the archives, I found a somewhat similar question
from last year
(http://lists.danga.com/pipermail/perlbal/2007-July/000537.html) where
it was suggested to use Gearman. Does this advice still apply? It
feels like there should be some way I can subvert the existing Perlbal
infrastructure to do this instead.
Thanks!
Nathan Kurz
nate at verse.com